Letter to Friedrich Engels, September 2, 1854

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

To Engels in Manchester

[London,] 2 September 1854, 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Frederic,

So now you're a member of the Exchange, and altogether respectable. My gratulations. Some time I should like to hear you howling amidst that pack of wolves.

Heise has written to Imandt, telling him that factory people — where I don’t know (nor does he say whether they're workers or manufacturers) — have banded together to appoint him their common instructor, and that he can count on getting £2 a week. Tant mieux pour lui [so much the better for him].

My wife — as I had good reason to fear before she left — is rather in too interesting circumstances, otherwise well.

Cluss has written again at last. I enclose his letter.

Has your old man arrived yet?

It is probably time we said something in the Tribune about military events in Asia. I have made a bit of a howler. In one of my recent letters I declared the news of the total defeat of the Turks at Kars to be a Vienna invention. True, the telegraphic dispatch was wrong, but it was nevertheless based on fact.

My principal study is now Spain. So far I have swotted up, mainly from Spanish sources, the 1808-14 and the 1820-23 periods. Am now coming to the years 1834-43. The thing is not without complexity. It is rather more difficult to discover exactly the springs behind developments. At any rate I made a timely start with Don Quixote. The whole thing will amount to about 6 articles for the Tribune, if much condensed. At least it may be counted a step forward that at this moment one’s studies are paid for.

Unfortunately the Library is closed from 1-7 September. Apart from other advantages, it’s the only cool place in London.

Entre nous, Dronke, for want of other ‘intellectual’ stimulus, is busily engaged in investigating ‘Steffen’ and, in his letters to Imandt, tears him to pieces in an attempt to render him politically ‘suspect’. I had no difficulty in convincing Imandt of the total absurdity of Dronke’s mischievous cavilling. C'est absurde. I consider that in Steffen our [party] has made a very good acquisition. He has character and education. His views on comparative geography, in which he has specialised, are quite original. Unfortunately a manuscript in which he elaborated his ideas on the subject was left behind in Cologne.

What is Lupus doing? Miquel didn’t come over from Paris as intended because, having had 2 attacks of cholera followed by a haemorrhage, he was finally ordered by the doctors to make his way back to Germany overland with all dispatch.

Vale faveque.

K. M.